Stakes and Validators are the core Ethereum staking resources in the Pier Two API
Stakes
Within the Pier Two Ethereum Staking API, a Stake represents a request for one or more validators. A stake contains data such as a withdrawal address, fee recipient, and a desired number of validators/amount of ETH to stake.
When a Stake is requested, the system will allocate a number of pre-generated validators key to satisfy your request. If the number of validators requests exceeds the number of available validator keys, you will have to wait for the system to generate the required keys.
By default, your account will be configured with a buffer of 100 keys available to immediately handle requests. Whenever you request new validator(s) by creating a new Stake, the system will automatically start the process of replenishing your pool of pre-generated keys back to the target amount buffer amount. Depending on the number of validators requested, it can take up to an hour to replenish the buffer.
For high-volume users
If you are a high volume user and require more than 100 pre-generated validator keys, please reach out to a member of our team.
Validators
A Validator represents an instance of Validator Client software running on hardware managed by Pier Two. A Validator is always associated with a Stake and thus all validators within a Stake share a withdrawal address and fee recipient.
Validators can be activated/exited independently of other Validators within a given Stake. Validators will have a Status at any given time, this Status will update throughout the lifecycle of the Validator and can have values such as WAITING_KEYGEN, WAITING_DEPOSIT, PENDING_ACTIVATION, etc. You can read more about Validator Statuses here.